NASA opens SpaceX's moon lander contract to rivals over Starship delays

[BumRushDaShow]

20. What's different

is that for some things, we contract out but NASA will "retain ownership" of the vehicles and/or software codes whereas in other cases, we will give "private" entities "grants" for producing the tech and in some cases, will "take ownership" (under NASA/the government) and in other cases, will just provide oversight, and the effort belongs to the private entity.

There had been an unfortunate trend in the modern U.S. where people were (righteously) complaining about "funding theoreticals, hypotheticals, and dreams" when you have large swaths of the population with no roof over their head or food to eat due to corporate malfeasance, and not correspondingly funding things to alleviate that. Thus the gradual "privatization" of space efforts.